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Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

Few technical managers struggle with more competing priorities than healthcare CIOs. But according to a recent survey, they’re pretty clear what they have to accomplish over the next few years, and optimizing EMRs has leapt to the top of the to-do list.

The survey, which was conducted by consulting firm KPMG in collaboration with CHIME, found that 38 percent of CHIME members surveyed saw EMR optimization as their #1 priority for capital investment over the next three years. To gather results, KPMG surveyed 122 CHIME members about their IT investment plans.

Meanwhile, respondents said that improving business and clinical processes was their biggest challenge, followed by improving operating efficiency and providing business intelligence and analytics.

It looks like at least some of the CIOs might have the money to invest, as well. Thirty-six percent said they expected to see an increase in their operating budget over the next two years, and 18 percent of respondents reported that they expect higher spending over the next 12 months. On the other hand, 63 percent of respondents said that spending was likely to be flat over the next 12 months and 44 percent over the next two years. So we have to assume that they’ll have a harder time meeting their goals.

When it came to infrastructure, about one-quarter of respondents said that their organizations were implementing or investing in cloud computing-related technology, including servers, storage and data centers, while 18 percent were spending on ERP solutions. In addition, 10 percent of respondents planned to implement cloud-based EMRs, 10 percent enterprise systems, and 8 percent disaster recovery.

The respondents cited data loss/privacy, poorly-optimized applications and integration with existing architecture as their biggest challenges and concerns when it came to leveraging the cloud.

What’s interesting about this data is that none of the respondents mentioned improved security as a priority for their organization, despite the many vulnerabilities healthcare organizations have faced in recent times. Their responses are especially curious given that a survey published only a few months ago put security at the top of CIOs’ list of business goals for near future.

The study, which was sponsored by clinical communications vendor Spok, surveyed more than 100 CIOs who were CHIME members — in other words, the same population the KPMG research tapped. The survey found that 81 percent of respondents named strengthening data security as their top business goal for the next 18 months.

Of course, people tend to respond to surveys in the manner prescribed by the questions, and the Spok questions were presumably worded differently than the KPMG questions. Nonetheless, it’s surprising to me that data security concerns didn’t emerge in the KPMG research. Bottom line, if CIOs aren’t thinking about security alongside their other priorities, it could be a problem.

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